There’s always more to love at Pounders

By Amy Williams

One of the most clever euphemisms ever invented is calling a strip club a “gentlemen’s club.” If you’ve ever been to one, the male patrons along “sniffer’s row” are anything but gentlemen. They don’t extend a chivalrous hand to help the ladies off stage or pull out the chair for her before she squats upon or straddles it. And they don’t typically hold her purse while she crawls across the stage collecting dollar bills. But to be fair, these ladies aren’t exactly innocent little butterflies either.

The “bad + bad = good” equation is exactly what Clyde Sedayle saw as his goldmine.

“Naked women doing their thing in front of horny men make the dollar bills in their pockets come alive, kinda like a snake charmer. And once those dollar bills work their way out of their trousers, they somehow magically find their way into my cash register,” he said with a wink.

Which is why Sedayle took to Des Moines’ east side to open Pounders, his fifth gentelmen’s club he’s launched in the metro this past year. But this one is different. This one, Sedayle noted, “carries more weight.”

A lot more weight.

At Pounders, it’s not about slithering down a pole, dancing or striking titillating poses. No, Sedayle doesn’t hold auditions — he holds weigh-ins. Tip the scale at less than 450 pounds and you’re gone faster than a Twinkie at a Weight Watchers meeting.

“Most our girls are softies, but that’s how I like ’em,” said Sedayle, who sports a proud girth himself. “I got the idea for Pounders from my wife, Priscilla. She’s everything I ever wanted in a loyal, trusty ol’ wife — big cans, big butt, big hair and as a fertile as they come. The bigger the cushion, the better the pushin’.”

Indeed Priscilla Sedayle is all those things and more. The mother of seven “little plumpers” weighs in at 477 pounds, she says, but readily admits, “that’s pretty much only when I’m working out. Normally I like to keep a few more rolls on than that.”

Clyde Sedayle said he rotates his dancers on a bi-weekly basis depending on how active the circuit is at the time. Generally, the first 23 days of each month trend toward the lean side, but during the last week, he said, it’s a constant flow.

“Amen, and period to that,” Sedayle said, raising a cold beer.

Patrons can pay to watch the ladies on a heavily reinforced stage but also have the option of having dinner with a “dancer” in an intimate buffet dining area adjacent to the bar. Should a customer want to ramp things up even more, that can be arranged, too, said Sedayle.

“Pretty much anything you wanna do, you can do for a price,” said Sedayle.

The drinks feature mostly keg beer in Solo cups and whiskey, vodka, gin and tequila in the well, a.k.a “the trough.” Beer is $8 for a 16-ounce cup (served on surprisingly classy pine-scented deodorizer coasters), and the first shot is free for anyone with a tattoo above the neck. April fools!